Childhood eczema revisited

I’ve recently been corresponding with a practitioner who was referred a 5-month-old boy for treatment for eczema. If you perform SET-DB™ on small children like this, there are some important considerations to keep in mind that will help you get to and correct the cause of the eczema quickly. (Much of this can also be found in the Practitioner Manual.)

1. ​Time of onset is very useful. You can typically ignore foods eaten well before onset and will need to pay close attention to foods eaten just prior to onset.
2. If an infant is on formula, be sure to check it as an auxiliary item in liquid and powder form. If he’s breast feeding, it’s possible to check the mother’s milk.
3. You can treat items not from the same category at one time, as long as you keep it to a minimum. I didn’t feel comfortable putting more than 4 or 5 items in any one treatment vial, unless, of course, they were all from the same category (i.e., trees, dairy, etc.)
4. Only the stimulation itself needs to be performed, not the entire treatment procedure. The holding time is the same, 15 minutes, as is the avoidance period, 4 hours if possible. If 4 hours isn’t possible, have them do the best they can.
5. Once you’ve checked the formula, check and treat items found in the library before you have the parent bring in foods from home. You typically won’t need to as treating for library items is usually effective.
6. Have the parent make a list of the foods the child eats. It’s usually easy because most infants and young children have a limited diet.
7. The foods that are most problematic for adults are also most problematic for infants and young children: wheat, corn, soy, sugar, yeast, eggs, and dairy.
8. Once you have a list of likely foods, testing is often unnecessary. Don’t do it if you don’t have to. You can just load samples you want to treat into a vial.

The testing is done by placing the child’s hand on one of more of the plates on the Hand Cradle. The parent or guardian please their hand over the child’s, and you’re off and running. We have one grandchild who thought this was good fun and one who wailed. May your young patients fall into the former, not the latter.